A Single Ascension of the Ladder of Life by Racheli Dyckman

Screaming and squalling, his new breath fogged the world.

Most everything was blurry,

Heated commotion stirred the air

But the infant felt keenly the warmth and comfort of love.

Here, from its base, the ladder seemed dauntingly insurmountable.

Growing at a dizzying pace, he was passed to and fro

The faces were not always familiar to him

Everything seemed a mystery,

The textures of carpet and wood and tile burned with questions

But the baby trusted the world would have his answers.

The small child sat in the leaves of autumn’s pride

And contemplated each sharp edge and flaming color

With restless energy in his small frame that could seldom be contained by nature’s mystery.

Wind was a constant rhythm on the small child’s face.

“Why is the sky blue?”

Legs got long and lanky

Balls and grass were replaced by freckles and pencils,

Chairs with straight backs and clever things to say.

The air seemed thicker with secrets and birthday parties.

The boy knew everything by now.

Shouldn’t he?

His shoulders broadened and his features became more defined.

The boy-turned-adolescent no longer smiled easily with gapped teeth,

His eyes held the pressures of acceptance,

The weight of questions he could no longer bring himself to ask.

His life became a series of aching thrills,

of beautiful sorrows.

This particular rung on the ladder felt frightfully unstable.

Sometimes, he desperately wanted for love and comfort.

Love sometimes felt like a burden.

Whatever.

The young man walks through his world with a new confidence,

Each of his steps radiating health and stability.

A strong new partnership makes the climb easier,

Soft and warm, tender and bitter-sweet,

A love of old is eclipsed by a love for the new.

The new day no longer holds the sparkling mystery it once had.

The climb has a steady rhythmic pattern for now,

The man can almost pretend he is content with it.

Midlife crisis hits like a storm,

A starving quest for the new and exotic.

New places and new people.

Running headlong into the rain of change that he cowered from in youth,

The middle-aged man knows in his heart that it isn’t real,

But the tiredness in his limbs is starting to scare him.

The aging man fights the climb for all he’s worth.

What once seemed so far in the distance looms frighteningly close.

A gentle hand closes over his.

“You know I love you, don’t you?”

The fight is over.

It is fall again.

A new freshness shrouds the world like a widow-bride.

The old man sitting beneath the willow thinks the world should seem older.

How many deaths it has seen.

How many births it has kissed.

But the world stays as youthful and fresh as a child in a garden,

looking up at the ladder from the ever-changing grass,

green and twisting at its base.

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